Confession: I love being alone. I identify as an introvert, so my favorite way to recharge (or just exist, quite frankly) is by spending some quality time with me, myself, and I. In high school, as an only child, I had a lot of alone time– sometimes too much, probably. Once I got to college however, things changed big time. Not only am now sharing a 15ftx12ft room with another person (who’s the best and who I could not imagine college without, by the way), but I’m also constantly surrounded by people in class, in the library, in the dining hall…in other words, for the first time ever I’m spending more of my day in presence of others than just by myself. And while it was certainly an adjustment, I wrestled my way into adjusting during the first several weeks, and eventually felt totally numb to the whole thing.
Then fall break hit. While the majority of my classmates fled the dorms, I hung around on campus and suddenly had several days of virtual solitude on my hands. At first I felt really uncomfortable. Not that I “missed” all the yelling from the quad at 2 a.m., per se, but it had been so long since I had genuine alone time that I was a little out of practice. Once I got back into it, though? It was kind of the best. In between getting my homework done, I went on long walks through the neighborhood, ordered in food to my room and got cozy with a Netflix show, finished a book I’d been reading for a weeks…by the end of the four days, I could barely remember that my res hall was not my private castle.
Obviously, there are pros and cons to this experience. While I feel peaceful and refreshed, I’m also struggling with the idea of jumping back into the swing of things this week. With that said, this week I want to encourage all of you– introverted, extroverted, or somewhere in between– to get some “you” time this week. Go for a walk, take your book outside in the sunshine, have a solo lunch date…whatever it is, remember to take deep breaths and remember what it is to be with your fabulous self.